Stored value, gift, or other pre-paid metered accounts associated with debits cards are well-known for providing access to goods and services. For example, stored value or gift cards may be purchased from various merchants such as Target®, Wal-Mart®, Starbucks®, Sears®, Blockbuster®, and the like. Pre-paid debit cards are also frequently purchased for telephone services. The purchase and usage of pre-paid debit cards has continued to increase in recent years to the point that the sale of pre-paid debit cards today is a multi-billion dollar industry.
Pre-paid debit cards are often printed and issued with a predetermined balance and typically then sold as a retail item. An example of such a card is a pre-paid gift card which provides an individual with a set dollar amount for the purchase of goods from a particular merchant. The account is accessed and debited by using an account number provided on the gift card. A problem experienced in the sale of such pre-paid debit cards is that merchants buying these cards are subsequently more exposed to loss through damage and theft. As such, merchants in the past have stored such pre-paid debit cards under lock and key until the moment the cards are purchased. This has prevented stocking of such cards on store shelves freely accessible by prospective purchasers and increases merchant handling time and expenses. In addition, the merchant must maintain inventory stock of different values of these pre-paid debit cards well in advance of when the debit cards are actually sold as a retail item, thus restricting working capitol.
With these problems in mind, merchants are now more frequently displaying non-activated debit cards. Such debit cards are not useable until activated by the merchant, usually by reading a bar code, magnetic stripe or similar identifying element and thereby electronically activating the account by sending the account number stored on the identifying element to a centralized database where accounts for cards are maintained and activated. Each card may be for a set or face amount, or may have its account value established (and replenished) by the merchant after receiving payment from the customer and sending the payment amount to the database. Using non-activated cards, the merchant can readily provide unfettered access of such cards to prospective purchasers and reduce handling time and costs as theft is no longer a concern since the non-activated debit cards have no monetary value. Further, merchants no longer carry a large initial expenditure since the merchant activates the debit card with a balance representing an amount a consumer wishes to attribute to the debit card at the time the debit card is actually purchased by the consumer.
Typically, such non-activated debit cards are displayed and/or packaged for sale in a retail store by affixing the card to a card carrier. The card is typically affixed to the card carrier by adhesives or by inserting corners of the card into openings within the card carrier. Further, a hole may optionally be cut into the card carrier so that the card carrier may be hung on a display in a retail store. Such card packaging is often cumbersome in that the merchant has to first remove the card from the packaging in which the card is displayed in order to activate the card at the time the debit card is actually sold. This problem has been overcome by providing an identifying element on both the card carrier and the debit card. Thus the merchant need only read or scan the identifying element on the carrier, and after the card is purchased, the customer may remove the card and discard the carrier, thereafter using the identifying element on the card itself to conduct transactions against the card account.
Various card display packaging is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,720,158, 5,918,909, 5,921,584, and 6,543,809. Credit card like structures are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,829,168, 6,471,127, 6,588,658, D-396,882, D-429,733, D-436,991, and D-457,556; U.S. Patent Publication Nos. 2002/0027837, 2002/0185543, and 2003/0010829; and Canadian Patent No. 2,300,241. The full disclosures of the each of the above patents and published patent applications are incorporated herein by reference.